


A Guardian Angel and a Cross to Bear

by slashtext



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, American Civil War, Loss of Limbs, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, make-out sessions at Gettysburg, self-indulgent references to Walt Whitman
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-25
Updated: 2014-10-25
Packaged: 2018-02-22 13:43:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,727
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2509856
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/slashtext/pseuds/slashtext
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After that last letter, he had tried to write to Steve; tried to make himself say “don’t come, don’t follow me here,” but he just let the ink drop puddles onto his paper, leaving stains instead of words. Steve would have come anyway, Bucky figures. They’d lasted three years apart, and that was the most they could manage.</p><p>Bucky goes to fight for the Union in 1861. Steve will do anything he can to follow.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Guardian Angel and a Cross to Bear

**Author's Note:**

> This is my submission for Fieldbears' Freezer Burn Contest on tumblr, which you should check out because people have been submitting some incredible stuff. 
> 
> I decided to write an American Civil War AU because the idea of tiny Steve trying to fight for the Union is frankly adorable to me, and I hope you'll think so, too. 
> 
> Also, Bucky's uniform in this story is that of the Brooklyn Chasseurs, because they wore red pants and I have a silly sense of humor.
> 
> [See it on Tumblr](http://sonickitty.tumblr.com/post/100912369020/a-guardian-angel-and-a-cross-to-bear)
> 
> [About the Contest & Voting](http://fieldbears.tumblr.com/post/98432784851/freezer-burn-contest)

_April 30, 1863_

_Dear Bucky,_

_It’s almost May here in Brooklyn, and I swear the whole city misses you almost as bad as I do. That stray cat of yours looks as sad as a melting snowman every time I see him, but he lets Peggy feed him, and he sat with me while I read your last letter. When I was reading it, I could imagine you well, with a warm meal and dry boots, and perhaps if I wish it hard enough, this letter will find you that way. There must be a rule somewhere says I have to suffer at least one illness a season, because as soon as my pneumonia went out with the winter, the spring brought in something new. Peggy is doing well, despite having to take care of me, and I’m trying (and failing) to be a good patient._

_I always like to tell you I am in good health, but it's time I said I haven't been. I'm wearing thin, thinner than I already am, if you can believe that. But I know you're seeing enough hurt where you are, and I love you too much to burden you with mine. I know there are men fighting for the Union who are worse off than I am, without the luxury of a warm bed and a wife to care for them, and the best I can do is write letters to keep your spirits_ up. _I think it’s time I did more._

“’S that a love letter, Barnes?” booms a voice from behind Bucky’s shoulder.

The card game has come to a halt, with the men sipping at their flasks and staring at him expectantly, anxious for news from home, even if the home isn’t theirs.

Bucky reaches for Dugan’s whiskey and chokes down a swig, says “sure it is,” and buries his worry with a story of a girl he once knew.

Dawn is creeping over the muddy rows of tents before he can manage to speak the truth.

“The letter was from Steve,” Bucky admits, running a hand absently over the ragged stubble on his chin.

Dugan sits propped up next to him, eyes trained diligently on the murky coffee boiling over the fire.

“He’s sick,” Bucky says.

“Again?” Dugan can’t help but chuckle. Letters from Steve were the whole regiment’s favorite, full of silly cartoons he drew for the newspaper and outlandish stories, usually about tiny, sickly Steve trying to beat down street thugs and his ailment of the month.

Bucky pulls in a muggy breath of late-spring air, and almost thinks he can hear musket fire between the chatter of the birds. They haven’t seen any action in over a week, but he’s jumpy nonetheless. “I think he’s trying to come out and fight.”

That’s enough to make Dugan quake with laughter, right down to the whiskers of his heavy mustache. “That’ll be the best story of the war! I thought you said he was too scrawny for the draft.”

“Doesn’t sound like he cares.” Bucky chews the inside of his cheek, trying to pull out the words. “He doesn’t sound good, Dum Dum.”

He hands the letter over to Dugan, and takes over watching the coffee bubble in the open kettle, keeping his eyes wide open for the sting of the smoke.

_“If the men of New York can suffer through malaria and musket fire, I’ll be damned if I can’t get out of bed long enough to fire off a couple shots for the Union. I always knew I would go before you; even the war can’t change that. So you had better stay safe ‘til I come to meet you, and I’ll march with you all the way back to Brooklyn. You finished every fight I ever started, and I want to use up the last of my strength fighting with you. Peggy never meant to love a soldier, but I've been at war my whole life, mostly against myself, so there’s not much left for me to be."_

“No cartoons this time,” Dugan notes heavily. “Think he’ll really make it?”

Bucky ponders for a moment, sucking his bottom lip between his teeth to ease out the tension. “He wouldn’t run off and get himself killed after all the time Peggy spent caring for him,” he says, blinking away the smoke. “Unless he had nothing to lose.”

Peggy had been nursing Steve ever since they got married, with all the love and devotion her wild spirit could muster, and Steve always did right by her, even when that meant watching Bucky march off to war without him.

“Looks like she sent you a letter of her own,” Dugan says, noting the extra paper tucked into the envelope. Bucky’s name is written in a lady’s elegant cursive.

“Yeah, I’ll read it later,” Bucky decides, swiping the papers out of Dugan’s meaty hands. “Lemme get some coffee, I’m starving. We gotta figure how we’re gonna welcome that damn fool when he finally gets here.”

June is fading into the heat of July by the time Steve makes good on his promise. When the 14th Brooklyn comes into Frederick, there he is in a field hospital, teasing Bucky for showing up so late.

“I thought you were dying,” Bucky admits to Steve over what passes for dinner. Steve runs a spoon through his thin stew, and smiles up at Bucky with flushed lips.

“Not today,” he says. “I’ve had an exquisite realization of health.”

“I hope you didn’t come from Brooklyn to Maryland just for that ,” Bucky quips, pouring over every sharp, pale angle of Steve’s face. Steve looks just like Bucky remembers, which is never very well. His brain is sturdier than his body, and most days he holds his bones together through stubbornness alone.

“I came to find you,” replies Steve simply, holding out his bowl so Bucky can eat what he doesn’t have the appetite to finish. His jaw locks in place, mulish and steadfast.

“You should be safe at home, Steve.” Bucky gives Steve’s knee a squeeze, feeling the bones jut out into his palm. “I can’t carry you all the way to Gettysburg.”

“Don’t be stupid,” Steve answers, covering Bucky’s wide, rough hand with his own, about half the size. “I thought I’d carry you.”

If Steve ever found any health at all, he loses it on the road. Bucky forces over half his rations into Steve’s nimble, bony hands, but they all wind up back in Bucky’s haversack. Steve coughs in violent fits just like Bucky remembers, still leaving spatters of blood melting into the scarlet hue of Bucky’s prized regiment pants. Steve pays no mind to his illness, and marches at Bucky’s side the whole way to Pennsylvania. No one has to be carried, not even Bucky with his tattered boots and blistered feet.

“If you make it through this,” Bucky warns Steve, “I’ll make your wife beat some sense into you.”

Steve huffs: a raspy, impatient sound. “You know I can make it. I’ll be with you to the end of the line.”

The last night of June is warm and restless, and smells like the sweat in Steve’s hair. They huddle together far from the other men, and Bucky’s arms come around him like keeping Steve warm is all they’re meant to do. The steady rattle of Steve’s breath against his chest keeps Bucky alert, but more at home on the hard ground than alone in his bed in Brooklyn.

“Bucky,” Steve whispers, head lolling against Bucky’s shoulder, “don’t forget to let me walk in front of you tomorrow.”

“And let you get plugged full of musket balls?” Bucky asks warily.

“I can use the lead for my pencils,” Steve says, leaning up so his lips drag against Bucky’s neck when he speaks.

“I wish we didn’t have to be here,” Bucky mutters, wondering why he and Steve couldn’t hold each other like this back home. When they were kids, they fit together perfectly, but then Steve had Peggy, and Bucky had the regiment, and their arms were too full.

“You don’t seem the type to run,” Steve teases.

“No, not without you.” Bucky feels Steve’s smile spreading up his bare skin over the place where his pulse is quickening, and clenches his fists in the wool of Steve’s tunic, daring just this once to pull him closer.

“Guess we’re stuck here, then.” Steve wrings out a sigh, and damp breath brushes Bucky’s neck, then his lips.

For a moment they part to let the midnight stillness fill their ears, before Steve pushes forward, opening Bucky’s lips with his own. He sucks gently, presses his teeth into Bucky’s bottom lip and smoothes the ache away with the slick of his tongue. They taste to each other like salt and sickness, and the tang of Steve’s blood, but Bucky groans into the kiss, letting their teeth clack and their legs tangle under the blanket. He falls asleep with the night air cooling the sweat and spit in his stubble, his heartbeat moving like the drums they’ll march to at sunrise.

Bucky kisses Steve after sunrise, too, pressing him hard against a tree, chest to chest, with his thumbs tracing the flush on Steve’s milky cheekbones. They move against each other to the rumble of canons, and horses running without riders. Steve’s hands tighten the bones of Bucky’s hips, and he breathes helplessly against Bucky’s mouth, sending low, aching moans vibrating through both their throats. Bucky runs his fingers over Steve’s snowy neck, his rigid shoulders and the threads of his tawny hair catching on the tree bark.

Soldiers crumble around them that afternoon, slumping into the dirt with helpless sobs or silent agony. Bucky shoots a rebel straight through the chest, and can almost imagine he’s the one sinking to his knees in the railroad bed, gaping up at the sky with blood on his hands and a hole in his heart. He wonders if they pray, looking to God in their final moments, and knows he would only be looking at Steve.

“Don’t forget to let me go ahead of you tomorrow,” Steve reminds him at the end of the first day, grazing his fingertips over Bucky’s sweat-soaked shirt.

They march side-by-side on the second day, their trousers darkening with the same dirt and blood and bits of metal and men. Their boots split and their canteens run dry. Bucky’s ears tingle with the echoes of musketry, and through the smoke and filth clogging his nose, he imagines he can smell Steve: light musk, newsprint, and windows open in the springtime.

“I’d love to draw this place,” Steve says in the evening, delicately swiping sweat and strands of hair off his eyebrows.

Bucky copies the motion, raking his dark hair back from his weathered face. “Leave out all the bodies if you do.”

“I will. I’ll draw just you and me, and the hills.”

Steve kisses him again, on the forehead, on his throat, on his sore and desperate lips. He moves like a light breeze in the July heat, sending sweet shivers through the battered muscles of Bucky’s back.

On the third day, Steve finally steps in front of Bucky on Culp’s Hill, blocking a musket ball. They sink to the ground in tandem, Bucky reaching around him to drench his fingers in the wound. He holds Steve close so the blood from his body paints a matching stain on Bucky’s shirt.

“You said I wouldn’t have to carry you,” Bucky chides when he wakes next to Steve in the makeshift hospital.

“Sorry,” Steve whispers, and Bucky’s not sure if the twist of his lips is a grimace or a smirk. “I’ll get you next time.”

“Just be alive and we’ll call it even.” Bucky fits himself against Steve on the cot, careful not to brush up against the belt of bandages circling his stomach.

“Don’t cry on me, Buck,” Steve laughs through a wretched grin. “Not every day I get laid up in the hospital for a war wound, and I wanna enjoy it.”

At least this is a soldier’s pain, Bucky thinks, not the hollow clutches of illness, the indignity of fumbling with his pencils or retching into a bedpan. Steve wears it like a medal, and Bucky feels pride for him that nestles deep under his ribs. In the morning, they watch halos of sunlight swell over the hills of Pennsylvania.

Steve never gets around to carrying Bucky, but Bucky has to pick him up a few more times: from Manassas to the Rapidan, through snow and mud. He loves holding Steve, loves carrying Steve, even when his kneecaps shake, and his arms go weak and raw. Steve is his guardian angel, his cross to bear.

It’s too cold to move that winter unless Steve curled around Bucky like an extra blanket. The one they have is full of holes now, but Steve can scorch Bucky’s skin with his kisses, and start his frozen blood pumping.

“Remember Thanksgiving at your mother’s?”Steve mumbles against Bucky’s cheek. “The whole place smelled like pumpkin pie and logs on the fire.”

“You tried to beat me in a pie-eating contest. You lost.” Bucky giggles at the memory, his breath hanging a white plume in the January air.

“You’re the one who got sick from it, so who’s the real loser?” Steve cocks an eyebrow, shimmying down to match up their hips. Bucky lets his head rock back, heavy from the pleasure sparkling in his gut as Steve’s icy fingers ghost under his shirt.

When winter ends, Bucky is ragged and undone, anchored only by Steve’s footsteps falling resolutely by his side, or his arms wrapping around Bucky’s aching neck when he carries him. A stiffness settles in his joints that never melts with the thaw, and his bones strain against the memory of old wounds. Their bodies are fading, sleepwalking behind the regiment.

Bucky carries Steve until a musket ball blows off his left arm in the wilderness. It swipes the meat off his body like a crow snatching up a piece of bread. He falls into Steve’s arms, watching red sweep over their blue tunics, and hopes dimly that the blood is his own. Time crawls through agony and absence. Steve holds tight to his right hand, worrying his thumb over the flaking skin of Bucky’s weather-beaten knuckles, and Bucky can even feel Steve’s fingers tangling with the ghost of his left.

After that last letter, he had tried to write to Steve; tried to make himself say “don’t come, don’t follow me here,” but he just let the ink drop puddles onto his paper, leaving stains instead of words. Steve would have come anyway, Bucky figures. They’d lasted three years apart, and that was the most they could manage.

Dugan is at his side when Bucky finally wakes, pain sending vibrations through his body like a bell.

“I honestly wasn’t sure you’d make it this time,” Dugan marvels, reaching to prop him up on the cot. The hospital is in an old church, reverberating with soldier’s cries, rather than the hymns of believers. Dugan hands over a flask.

“Then again,” he continues, “I thought you were done for when I dragged you off Culp’s Hill with all that lead in your gut. You’re a tough bastard, you know that?”

Bucky takes a nip of the stale whisky. “Not much else left for me to be.”

Dugan nods gravely in response. “You’ve got a wife at least, to look after you.”

“No, I’m a bachelor,” Bucky replies, his eyes drifting magnetically towards his left shoulder. “Imagine I always will be now.”

“I thought you had a girl. That little blonde thing you use to talk about – the artist.”

“What, Steve?” Bucky croaks out a laugh, half in love with the idea of Steve as his wife.

“No, I thought you told stories about some girl back home. Can’t for the life of me remember her name,” Dugan trails off, running pensive fingers through his overgrown moustache.

Bucky nibbles skin off the inside of his cheek and shakes his head. “There was only Steve.”

Dugan’s big eyes darken and shimmer for a quick moment before he looks away. “Buck, did you ever read that letter from Steve’s wife before you threw it away?”

“What letter?” Bucky wonders, muddled by his pain and the acrid scent of injured flesh.

“It’s just, they’ll be sending you home and all,” Dugan explains, serious and slow. “And you gotta know he’s not gonna be there.”

“‘Course he won’t,” Bucky slurs, frowning and Dugan’s complete lack of sense. “He’s been here with me.”

Dugan takes a long, shuddering breath and nods methodically. “Ok, Buck,” he says, like a parent to a child. “Lets get you some rest. Lay down now, just sit back.”

The nurses look after Bucky until he heals, and then they wash him, package him up and send him back to Brooklyn by train. Every bump of the rails throws spasms of pain through the stump below his shoulder, but Steve holds his head steady on his lap.

“Does this count as carrying you?”Steve asks, a tender smirk tugging at his mouth as he twines his fingers through Bucky’s disheveled hair.

“Sure, darling.”

Bucky fixes his eyes on Steve the whole way back, like Steve would disappear if he ever stopped watching. He loves the way the hollows under Steve’s eyes frame the black of his lashes, and the small stutters of his chest when he inhales.

“Go see Peggy for me,” Steve says on the Brooklyn ferry, his hand a steadying guide on the small of Bucky’s back. Bucky curls his fingers around the rail, whitening his knuckles, and watches the sunlight reflect off the water. It stings his eyes like the bright glow of Steve’s golden hair, and the salty June breeze that breaks over his face. He counts the masts of the other ships. He times his breathing with the bob of the ferry boat.

When the ferry reaches the end of the line, he steps out into the street alone. He shaves and pins up the left sleeve of his jacket before going to see Peggy. She greets him with a grieving smile that looks as heavy as the black crape of her dress.

“You have wonderful timing,” she tells him over a pitcher of lemonade. “I was away with the Red Cross until just a few days ago. I’ve been with them since last May."

“You were a nurse?” Bucky asks, the acid of the lemonade sticking to his tongue.

“I already had so much experience looking after Steve, I thought I might do some good.” Peggy’s eyes wander over Bucky’s face, looking for echoes of her own grief in his vacant eyes. “It’s been lonely now that I’m back. Sometimes I still bring tea up to his study. And once I get there I realize he isn’t here, but I’ll stay for hours. I’ll have whole conversations with him.”

“He went out fighting, though,” Bucky says, though his heart still feels as empty as his sleeve.

“Yes, he did. He was quite a fighter.” Peggy smiles a little at the memory of Steve and the countless bruises she’d kissed off his skin.

“He was incredible, Peggy.” The words clot in Bucky’s throat, and he furrows his brows and lips. “He made it three days at Gettysburg, and then he jumped in front of me and a musket ball hit him dead in the stomach. He died the next morning, on his birthday.”

Peggy curls a hand to her heart, like his words are a wounded bird she’s cradling.

“Bucky,” she breaths, completely adrift. “What are you talking about?”

“He died a hero,” Bucky affirms, strands of dark hair brushing over his eyes like a veil. “And that’s right isn’t it? Steve would have wanted it that way, if he had to die. At least he died for something.”

“That is a beautiful story, Bucky,” Peggy replies through trembling lips. Her fingers wrap tight and wiry around his hand, and she lets silence settle around them, stale and restful like a tomb. “I was going to see his grave today. You’ll join me, won’t you?”

To Bucky, the streets of Brooklyn seem strangely bare, despite the tide of people rolling through the streets. He wonders absently where they moved all the bodies, before realizing there were never any there. The carriage jostles them over the cobblestone from Fort Greene to Cypress Hills Cemetery, where rows of tombstones welcome them like a parade.

Peggy leads him by the hand to small plot on a hill, where the vibrant green of the countryside below melts into the water and sky.

“Steve would like to paint this,” Bucky says, sinking to his knees by the headstone. Peggy joins him, her skirt billowing out in waves over the downy grass.

“I’m glad you agree,” she says. “I know you loved him as much as I did.”

“I still talk to him, too,” Bucky admits in a low voice, tracing his forefinger over Whitman’s familiar words in the epitaph.

_O I say these are not the parts and poems of the body only, but of the soul,_  
_O I say now these are the soul!_

“The dates are wrong,” he observes.

_Steven G. Rogers_  
_Born July 4, 1841_  
_Died May 1, 1863_

Peggy opens her mouth to speak, and closes it.

“I can still go out fighting,” Steve had said with a tenacious grin, face as pale as the starchy white of his pillows. A pool of sweat framed a halo around his damp hair, his sheets were hemmed with flecks of blood.

Hadn’t his bed been battlefield enough, she still asks herself.

Soaking up the early summer sun in the dark fabric of her dress, Peggy wonders if it really matters when he died, or how. Either way, he was with someone he loved; either way, he was fighting. Glancing at the crumpled bend of Bucky’s shoulders, she knows what he needs to hear.

“Of course they are,” she agrees, dropping a tight-lipped kiss to his temple.

Peggy presses into the empty space at Bucky’s left side, and they wait out the afternoon together, just the two of them, and the hills, and the grave.


End file.
